


If You're Alive

by FaintlyMacabre



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (also mentioned) - Freeform, (mentioned) - Freeform, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Best Friends, Crying, Eye Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Guns, Healing, Junoverse | Juno Steel Universe, Suicidal Thoughts, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25249993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaintlyMacabre/pseuds/FaintlyMacabre
Summary: "Will you come back down the lighthouse?”“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m waiting.”“Whomever or whatever you are waiting for, you will be better able to receive them if you are not dead. Please come back down.”“Listen very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,” she said. She tried to stand, realized she couldn’t, and decided that remaining seated would better underline her point. “I am staying here, and while I can’t make you leave, I’d enjoy my wait better if you were elsewhere.”“All right, I will leave.” Before she could enjoy her victory, huge hands were scooping her up and depositing her on a huge shoulder. “You are coming with me."
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Jet Sikuliaq
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702642
Comments: 8
Kudos: 54
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	If You're Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Bad Things Happen Bingo: Don't Let Them See You Cry with Buddy, for a Tumblr user I wish I had written down but I didn't. If this was your request, let me know and also I'm sorry this has taken so long! It has gone through several permutations since I started writing it.
> 
> This is rated T for thematic content. Both active and passive suicidal ideation is discussed, though only briefly. This takes place both before and after Buddy's surgery to replace her eye, hence the tags for eye trauma and surgery. Nothing darker or more violent than in canon, but please be aware if you find these subjects triggering.

Her head felt stuffed full of cotton when she awoke amidst beeping machines. She blinked and it felt wrong. On her right side she felt the glide of eyelid over eye but on her left she felt no such thing. She’d known, of course, what this surgery was for and what it would entail, but she still had to fight a wave of panic rising in her stomach. She touched a hand to the bandage and she could feel the tiny vibration of an aperture opening and closing.

At this, she felt tears sting her remaining organic eye. It was all over now: her days of quiet self-destruction, her days of waiting for someone who would never come home. She would never stop hoping, of course, but it would be the kind of hope that would be interred somewhere deep, present but never blooming.

“Buddy.” His voice came from her left, which must have been why she hadn’t noticed him.

She turned away. “Yes, darling?”

“How are you feeling?”

The laugh she choked out was watery, much more fragile than she would have liked. “Oh, right as rain, at least until the painkillers wear off.” Lying down was about what her energy level afforded, but she wanted to curl up in a ball, make herself a smaller target for whatever hurt would come next. Make her tears less obvious.

“Would you like some help?”

She would not, but she had to admit that in her current state, sitting up on her own would tire her out enough that she’d just have to lie down again. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

He came around to the right side of the bed and pulled her up easily; when she started to sway, he sat down next to her to let her lean on his shoulder. At least he was on her left. Could she still cry on that side? It seemed unlikely but she didn’t know.

“It’s laughably inadequate, but I believe I should thank you,” she said, just about getting her voice not to shake.

“I do not believe ‘should’ comes into it,” he said. “Change is difficult, and if you do not thank me I will not hold it against you.”

“No? Well, that’s no good.” She was trying so hard to sound steady, but her resolve was stretched almost to breaking. “I think I’d rather you get angry at me.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you,” was all he said. It hadn’t been 48 hours since he’d hauled her down from the top of the lighthouse, but already that span of time felt longer than the two years they’d known each other.

* * *

She didn’t look up until his shadow fell over her. Even then, it took a second.

“Ves—“ It wasn’t Vespa. “I know you—”

“Yes,” he said. “The bar is usually open by now.”

“High stakes to brave for a drink,” she said. She couldn’t remember his name, but she also couldn’t summon the energy to worry about that. “Sorry, darling, but I don’t think we’ll be opening today.”

“I expect not,” the mountain of a man standing over her said. “I would be very interested to know why you are up here if you would like to tell me, but that can wait. Will you come back down the lighthouse?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I’m waiting.”

“Whomever or whatever you are waiting for, you will be better able to receive them if you are not dead. Please come back down.”

“Listen very carefully, because I’m only going to say this once,” she said. She tried to stand, realized she couldn’t, and decided that remaining seated would better underline her point. “I am staying here, and while I can’t make you leave, I’d enjoy my wait better if you were elsewhere.”

“All right, I will leave.” Before she could enjoy her victory, huge hands were scooping her up and depositing her on a huge shoulder. “You are coming with me. At least, until we get back to the ground.”

“Put me down!” she tried to shout, but it just came out a rasp. She pounded his back with her fists, but while the impacts reverberated through her hands and arms, he didn’t seem to feel them at all.

“I will put you down once we are back on ground level,” he boomed in a voice she could feel through the not-yet-ruined side of her face and torso. She wanted to scream, but her throat closed up, and all she could do was watch the steps climb up and away from them, up to the place where she needed to be.

Later, when he’d repaired the door and she, with shaking hands, had made them both tea, he told her about the eye he wanted to give her, and she asked him:

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you do this for someone you hardly know?" she said. "Why do it at all? I can count on one hand the people I’d do this for, and I wouldn’t even need the other four fingers.”

“Perhaps you do not remember the first night you saw me in your bar.”

“I believe I’d find it exceedingly difficult to forget a patron who seemed just as likely to shoot themselves as me.”

“Hmm. Then you do not understand the value I now place on my own life.”

“You had a gun to your head, darling,” she said. “I talked you down. This hardly compares.”

“No? I very nearly shot both you and myself,” he said. “You acted at great personal risk; no amount of money can compare to that. And while it is true that it would only have taken one shot to end my life forever, I was killing myself with the choices I made every day. To me, the circumstances are more similar than not.” He took a sip of his tea. “Also, my acquaintance with you is the closest relationship I currently have.”

Buddy blinked. “You—”

“I do not wish to discuss this now,” he said, looking up at her again. His face softened almost imperceptibly. “Later, I would like to tell you, if you still want to know.”

Buddy felt the weight of this statement as though he was handing her a tray of cut crystal or a sleeping child, the trust in his voice making her aware of both the risk and the gift. “I would,” she said, finally. He nodded.

She’d been there when he’d sold the car. This was a slow and painful process for both of them. She almost wanted to insist that he call it off, this was too much, not worth it, but it was done by the time she'd mustered the energy to say, "Don't."

The rest, from the start of their motorcycle ride to the moment she began counting back from 100, was lost to the anesthesia.

* * *

“There’s no going back, is there.” It wasn’t a question. She was sitting on a hospital bed, tethered to machines, a new device in her skull, leaning both literally and figuratively on someone who hadn’t even told her his name.

“There never is,” he said. “The choices we have made, and the choices that were made for us, are no longer accessible. It can feel… paralyzing. But as a wise woman once said to me, ‘if you are alive, you might as well live.’”

Hearing her own words being given back to her, nearly two years after she’d given them to him, somehow made her laugh, and once she began laughing she could not keep from crying. She made a valiant effort; pressing the heel of her hand into her right eye, holding her breath, tipping her head back and losing her balance. He caught her again, this time keeping an arm around her as she shook through the tears. The wail that tore itself from her throat made her think of a wild animal in pain. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry like this since… Well. Since Vespa. Buddy supposed it was fitting; in this moment, it felt as though she'd lost her all over again.

“There is something else I would like to tell you,” the man said, once the sobs that wracked her body had quieted.

“What’s that?” she rasped out. The crying had taken a lot out of her, and she felt ready to sleep for a week. Maybe she would.

He glanced over his shoulder at the door, which was still closed. “Sikuliaq,” he said. “My name is Jet Sikuliaq.”

News bulletins flashed through her mind about the Unnatural Disaster and his crimes, the hunt for a killer. Pieces slid into place, and she turned to look at him for the first time since he’d sat down next to her. He was sitting very still, facing the opposite wall, as though he knew exactly what she was thinking and was afraid of her reaction.

“Well, Jet Sikuliaq,” she said, turning back to face the same wall, “your friend sounds like she knew what she was talking about.”

She could feel some of the tension leave him, and they sat for a while, exhausted and battered and very much alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'd love it if you left a kudos or comment—even if I get too anxious to answer every comment— or followed me on Tumblr @princegabriel, where you can take a look at my remaining Bad Things Bingo prompts :)


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